Friday, May 30, 2008

On the 17th July 1579 the queen was in her ‘privie barge’ on the river between Greenwich and Deptford, and with her the French Ambassador, Jean de Simier (rather splendidly misreported here as ‘Mounsier Schemere’), the Earl of Lincoln, and her Vice Chamberlain, Christopher Hatton.

Drama followed that would put present day 24 hour news in meltdown:

“it chaunced that one Thomas Appeltree a yong man and servantto M. Henrie Carie, with ii or iii children of her Majesties Chappel, & one other named Barnard Acton, being in a boate on the Thames, rowing up & down betwixtthe places aforenamed, the aforesaid Thomas Appeltree had a Caliver or Harquebush, which he had three or foure times discharged with bullet, shooting at random verie rashly, who by great misfortune shot one of the watermen (being the second man next unto the bales of the said Barge, labouring with his Oare, which sate within six foot of hir highnesse) cleane through both of his armes: the blow was so great and grievous, that it moved him out of his place, and forced him to crie and scritche out piteously, supposing himself to be slaine, and saying he was shotthrough the body. The man bleedin abundantly, as though he had had a hundred daggers thrust into him, the Queenes Majesty shewed such noble courage as is most wonderfull to be hearde and spoken of, for beholding hym so maimed, and bleeding in suche sorte, she never bashed thereat, but shewed effectually a prudent and magnanimous heart, & most courteously comforting the poore man, she bad him be of good cheare, and sayd he should want nothing that might be for his ease, commanding him to be covered till such time as he came to the shore, til which time he lay bathing in his own bloud, which might have bene an occasion to have terrified the eies of the beholders. But such and so great was the courage and magnanimitie of our dread and soveraigne Ladie, that it never quailed.”

Unsurprisingly, the culpably careless Appeltree and his companions were apprehended, he was brought before the Privy Counsel, which found the case ‘most haynous and wicked’, and pronounced a death sentence. Appeltree was put in the Southwark Marshalsea, and the next Tuesday paraded through the city, outto Black Wall, and then to a gibbet beside the river.

Very penitent, on his knees, poor Appeltree spoke of his trust in Jesus, and ‘discoursed very godly’. He also asserted that “GOD is my judge, I never in my lyfe intended hurtto the Queenes most excellent Majesty … I am penitent and sory for my good mayster, M Henrie Carie, who hath bene so grieved for my fault, suffering rebuke for the same.” Carey was a fairly new member of the Privy Council (from 1577), Appeltree may have been connected to his company of players (which would later do him much more credit as ‘The Lord Chamberlain’s Men).

“The teares gusht out of his eyes very fast …And as the executioner as one greedy of his pray, had putthe roape about his necke, the people cried, stay, stay, stay, and with that came the right honorable Sir Christopher Hatton Viz-chamberlayne to hir highnesse, who enquired what he had confessed, and being certified as is before expressed, he vailed his bonnet, and declared thatthe Queenes Majestie had sent him thither both to make the cause open to them how haynous and grievous the offence of the saide Thomas Appeltree was, and further to signifie to him hir gratious pleasure: & so continued his message, as ye may read it printed by it self, and annexed to this discourse…”

[The promised message announcing royal clemency is not in fact in the pamphlet]

“Whether that Appeltree had cause to be joyful or no, I leave to your judgements, who being come downe from the ladder, received his pardon and gave GOD and the Prince praise.”

Everyone presentthen prayed for the Queen, using the same form of words as in Church. I suppose thatthe stupidly silly Appeltree was saved by his youth (he is in the company of youthful performers from the Queen’s Chapel), and the interventions of the embarrassed Henry Carey as a character witness. Appeltree was found only ‘traytorlike’, but, it seems, too young to be a plausible assassin in the pay of Rome or Spain. If they were only going to hang him for nearly shooting the Queen, they must even in that have conceded that it had been an accident: a traitor would have had the full savagery of being hanged, drawn, and quartered. The pamphlet’s hostility turns againstthe executioner, greedy for his prey and his perquisites, and so, on the shoreline near Blackwall, a party of Londoners outto see a hanging get instead a drama of royal clemency. The Queen does indeed seem to have behaved very well through all this.

Afterwards, the lucky Thomas Appeltree, “Justly condemned for his trespasse to die the death …Most gratiously by the singular mercy and bountie of our dread and soveraigne Ladie Queene ELIZABETH preserved” disappears from history, with a story to tell for the rest of his life.

A briefe discourse of the most haynous and traytorlike fact of Thomas Appeltree for which hee shoulde haue suffred death on Tuisday the one and twentith of Iulie last: wherin is set downe his confession. Whereunto is annexed, the report of the message sentto the place of execution from hir most excellent Maiestie, by the right honourable Sir Christopher Hatton Knight, vizchaberlain to hir highnesse (1579)

(I hunted for a suitable image of a royal barge, and only found the unprovenanced and undated woodcut.)

Sunday, May 25, 2008

I’m being encouraged to find out about early modern swimming (no, seriously, I am), not I think much considered since Michael West plunged in with his ‘Spenser, Everard Digby, and the Renaissance Art of Swimming’, Renaissance Quarterly (Spring, 1973). This led me to think about bathing scenes, and so on to David and Bathsheba, and I’ve been looking at the Web Gallery of Art’s collection of images. In most, Bathsheba is being ‘bathed’ by her lady attendants sponging her from a basin or ewer, but I did choose a health-spa like scene as my image; it is by Jacopo Zucchi (1573-ish). I think the lady in the middle of the pool may be working on a round-arm stroke; the lady emerging from the water does seem neither to have read the ‘No Petting’ notice nor its small print addendum ‘not even yourself’. They are perhaps all meant to be episodes of Bathsheba doing what her name seems to foretell she would do.

I arrived at a text: Sylvester’s version of Du Bartas, ‘Fourth Day of the Second Week’, where the story of David is told, including a killingly funny version of David and Goliath, and a eulogy on David as poet, with Sylvester’s ownquirky testimonial:

“And I my Self in my pied Plaid a-slope, / With Tune-skilled foot after his Harp do hop.”

(There’s a side-note on ‘plaid’: ‘A kind of light mantle made of a thin checkered Cloth, worn by the Hill-men in Scotland : and now much used with us for Saddle clothes’.)

Leaving the pursuit of the plaid in early modern poetry to another idle hour, this is David’s moral ‘decay’, triggered by Bathsheba:

His Song’s sweet fervor slacks, his Soul’s pure FireIs damp’d and dimm’d with smoke of foul desire:His Harp is laid a-side, he leaves his Lays,And after his fair Neighbors Wife he neighs.

The Bible narrative is terse on David’s behaviour as stallion:

2. And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.

3. And David sent and enquired after the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

4. And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house.

5. And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am with child.

6. And David sent to Joab, saying, Send me Uriah the Hittite …

Du Bartas and Sylvester go to work on this, and are busy to blame Bathsheba for her vanity and exhibitionism:

But, her proud Beauty now, and her Eyes’ force,Began to draw the Bill of their [her and Uriah’s] Divorce:Honor gives place to Love: and by degreesFear from her heart, Shame from her forehead flees.The Presence-chamber, the High street, the TempleThese Theaters are not sufficient ampleTo show her Beauties, if but Silk them hide:She must have windows each-where open wideAbout her Garden-Baths, the while thereinShe basks and bathes her smooth Snow-whiter skin;And one-while set in a black Jet-like Chair,Perfumes, and combs, and curls her golden hair

What I found interesting is the mixture of aesthetic memories triggered in the Bartas-Sylvester combo when she actually gets into the water of the bathing pool:

Another-while under the Crystal brinks,Her Alabastrine well-shap’t Limbs she shrinksLike to a Lilly sunk into a glass:Like soft loose Venus (as they paint the Lass)Born in the Seas, when with her eyes sweet-flames,Tunnies and Triton, she at-once inflames:Or like an Ivory Image of a Grace ,Neatly enclos’d in a thin Crystal Case:Another-while, unto the bottom dives,And wantonly with th’under-Fishes strives:For, in the bottom of this liquid Ice,Made of Musäick work, with quaint deviceThe cunning work-man had contrived trimCarps, Pikes, and Dolphins seeming even to swim.

The lily in a glass and ivory image conceits are directly out of Ovid (Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, that memorable scene of the memorable hazards of swimming in cold water), Venus inflaming the tuna comes from paintings, and Bathsheba ducking under the water to strive wantonly with the ‘under-Fishes’ takes us back to the two blondes in the Jacuzzi who impede the progress of Guyon, champion of temperance, in Spenser’s ‘Bower of Bliss’ episode (the quaint phrasing is pure Sylvester). Could the mosaic tiles of the pool, with those Mediterranean dolphins, be from Roman baths?

David is of course captivated by what he sees (as in the Bible, he sees her by accident because he, well, just happens, to be up on a roof terrace, right, but her open-windowed bathhouse was made to invite prying eyes to the admiration of her beauty):

Ishai’s great son, too-idly, walking hieUpon a Tarras, this bright star doth spy;And sudden dazzled with the splendor bright,Fares like a Prisoner, who new brought to lightFrom a Cymmerian , dark, deep dungeon,Feels his sight smitten with a radiant Sun.But too-too-soon re-clear’d, he sees (alas)Th’admired Tracts of a bewitching Face.Her sparkling Eye is like the Morning Star:Her lips two snips of crimson Satin are:Her Teeth as white as burnished silver seem(Or Orient Pearls, the rarest in esteem):Her Cheeks and Chin, and all her flesh like SnowsSweet intermixed with Vermillion Rose,And all her sundry Treasures selfly swell,Proud, so to see their naked selves excel.

I love her lips as ‘two snips of crimson satin’ (you can always count on a pious author to let rip when the tale turns sexy). I cannot track her ‘sundry Treasures’ that ‘selfly swell’ back in the vast expanses of EEBO texts, but I assume that it is correct and not an error for ‘softly’: her plusher parts are actually swelling in pride at their own plushness.

David has a rapturous apostrophe about the tantalizing effects of this bathing beauty:

O peerless Beauty, merely Beautiful;(Unknow'n) to me th’art most unmerciful:Alas! I die, I die (O dismal lot!)Both for I see thee, and I see thee notBut a-far-off and under water too:O feeble Power, and O (what shall I do?)Weak Kingly-State! sith that a silly WomanStooping my Crown, can my soul’s Homage summonBut, O Imperial power! ImperialState!Could (happy) I give Beauty’s Check the Mate.

Thus spake the King: and, like a sparkle smallThat by mischance doth into powder fall,Hee’s all a-fire; and pensive, studies nought,But how t’accomplish his lascivious thought…

Well, our authors skip through the stirring piece of Bible-based nookie that follows, so as to get back on track with a moralist’s comment on all these goings-on

When Nathan (then bright Brand of Zeal and Faith).Comes to the King, and modest-boldly sayth…

Nathan doesn’t get some prophetic glimpse of Solomon, loved of the Lord, but ‘modestly-boldly’ tells his King off for the future depravities his fall from grace will trigger. The Book of Samuel mentions in passing that David’s actions displeased the Lord; here, Nathan imagines the Lord’s reprisal will take the perhaps surprising form of an epidemic of incest (Nathan reinforces his point by pointedly observing to David that the latter’s wives will receive his seed or genetic heritage by proxy from his inflamed male offspring). Little or none of this is in 2 Samuel 12, where Nathan says that the Lord will content himself by having David’s wives lie with the neighbour, not in secret, but ‘in sight of this sun’.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

I have been doing various bits of marking, and otherwise, in the evenings, I watch tapes of the day’s stage in the Giro d’Italia: a lot of pedaling uphill, in other words.

In a rare literary moment, I was wondering about the extent of serious and satirical verse-writing based on that processional supplication, the Litany. John Donne’s ‘A Litanie’ is the most famous; the earliest Tudor literary use of the litany I’ve so far found occurs in a semi-macaronic poem at the end of the The proude wyues pater noster that wolde go gaye, and vndyd her husbonde and went her waye (1560). This is a poem that more strongly recollects the Latin litany than Cranmer's relatively new English text (link below).

Sidney did a less serious one about love having been killed by his mistress; so here’s a stanza:

Let Dirge be sung, and Trentals richly read,For Love is dead.And wrong his Tombe ordaineth,My Mistress marble hart:Which Epitaph containeth,Her eyes were once his Dart.From so ungrateful fancie,From such a female frenzie,From them that use men thus:Good Lord deliver us.

And we will all remember Nashe’s plangent lyric in time of plague, in Summer’s Last Will and Testament (to quote from it):

Autumn hath all the Summer’s fruitful treasure, Gone is our sport, fled is poor Croyden’s pleasure: Short days, sharp days, long nights come on apace, Ah who shall hide us, from the Winters face? Cold doth increase, the sickness will not cease, And here we lye God knows, with little ease:

From winter, plague & pestilence, good Lord deliver us.

In the 17th century, the mock-litany became a regular satiric form. There was a glut of them around 1680, many in connection with Titus Oates and the Popish plot:

This from a time when one of the things to pray for delivery from was “a lash with the quill of Satyricall Dryden”.

One of the more interesting mock litanies is a lampoon on George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (the Restoration one): here’s two stanzas about his alleged proclivities:

From Monstrous Sucking, till both Tongues have Blisters,

From making our Boasts of giving three Glisters

By giving our Claps to three cheated Sisters

Libera nos

From Transposing Nature upon our Bon—Gers,

On Keniston Acting both Venus and Mars,

From owning twenty other men’s Farce

Libera nos

That’s Edward Kynaston the actor, who did perform in Buckingham’s The Rehearsal, getting a mention for his skill performing in both genders. Pepys admired this skill in the theatre, the lampoon imputes that the Duke experienced it at rather closer quarters (The litany of the D. of B., 1679-1680). I suppose ‘Bon-Gers’ must be a version of ‘bon gars’ in French.

But my favourite litany poem is by William Vaughan, in The Golden Fleece (1626). Vaughan apparently had a lot of things he was worried about, as he spins out his prayer for divine multiple rescue to 396 lines. As available rhymes tempt him, the plagues he asks to be delivered from get more and more heterogeneous (and interesting). But then, who wouldn’t want delivery from ‘weeping cheese with Argus eyes’, ‘causeless drumming’, ‘Scammonie made into Pills’, ‘From ordring Bees, when they are mov’d’, and ‘From rampant Nuns now clad in gray: / From Strumpets wholly giv’n to play’?

I wonder, though, how bad his ‘rampant nuns’ problem could have been in rural Carmarthenshire. Maybe he had trouble with them when on his trip abroad?

Here’s a full section of Vaughan, and, below that, his prayers for delivery from idle amusements like plays, poetry, and card games (I was tempted to foist in a few extra verses about the Internet, but refrained):

From Spanish Pensions , and their Spies: From weeping Cheese with Argus eyes, From slumbering long in careless Peace: From dreaming oft of cureless ease. From fond Masks, and idle mumming: From fain'd Plays and causeless drumming. From preferring Peace with danger Before just War, wrong’s revenger. From suffering Foes to triumph still; From letting Sathan have his will. From falling from Saint Michael’s arms, Not taking heed by others’ harms. From puffing up proud Giants grown: From pulling David’s courage down. From loving Money more then God; From keeping Beans within the cod. From disbursing needful treasure, To maintain phantastick pleasure. From greasing Lawyers’ hands with Gold, Which better serves to keep a Hold. From fostring Suites (O pois'nous Toad) For Money , which ends Wars abroad. From those men, which sue Protections To shroud their lewd shrewd Defections. Great Britain’s Genius Guard and restore vs.

… From spending time at Tragedies : Or hard got Coin at Comedies . From reading foolish Rimers’ Books, Or lying Tales, like baited hooks. From much Play at Noddy and Trump: As from the Smell of foul ship-pump. From many Horses, Hounds, and Hawks: Actæon’s end, or plots of Faukes. From idle Tales, Wares, and Fables: From Primero, Gleek , and Tables. From Irish, Lurch, Chance, and Ticktack. The Boot deserving, or the Rack.

Vaughan ought to have included a prayer against lightning, for his first wife died in 1608 after their house was hit by a bolt. As a memo to myself, his The spirit of detraction conjured and convicted in seven circles: a work both divine and morall, fit to be perused by the libertines of the age, who endeavour by their detracting and derogatory speeches to embezell the glory of God and the credit of their neighbours (1611) apparently answered local imputations that he was somehow implicated in this death, though it is hard to imagine how. I must investigate what he says in self-defence.

I must also read at some point this series of pamphlets in 1637, in which John Bastwick first published his own litany, was attacked, then answered the attacks, and finally went completely onto the offensive:

1) The letany of John Bastvvick, Doctor of Phisicke being now full of devotion, as well in respect of the common calamities of plague and pestilence; as also of his owne patticular miserie: lying at this instant in Limbo Patrum.

2) The ansvver of Iohn Bastwick, Doctor of Phisicke, to the exceptions made against his Letany by a learned gentleman which is annexed to the Letany it selfe, as articles superadditionall against the prelats

3) A more full answer of John Bastwick, Dr. of Phisick made to the former exceptions newly propounded by another wellwiller to him, against some expressions in his Letany, with his reasons for the printing of it.

4) The vanity and mischeife of the old letany. Or A further answer of John Bastwick, Doctor of Physick, to some other exceptions made against his Letany

My image is from A litany from Geneva, in answer to that from St. Omers(1682), which I liked because someone annotated the poem with identifications of some of the people it attacks.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

I bought these two old photographs because I liked them. No provenance at all, though the rather bohemian gentleman with his daughter is on an unused English postcard.

The sisters out tricycling together are in a Victorian photograph. I think those might be Humber tricycles, and it could be as far back as the mid 1880's. Those seem to be all steel wheels, I can see a spoon brake to the front wheel, and foot pegs for descents. These must have been children from a wealthy family: these machines were expensive, the girls have matching natty hats to ride in, and of course their father (I guess) is in the road with his camera, and has asked the girls to look right and left as they approach. The avenue of oaks suggests parkland, or long-lost bucolic England at its most idyllic.

I cannot work out the gentleman with his daughter. He has a safety bicycle with pneumatic tyres, and his daughter in the tag-along. He doesn't look wealthy (no watch chain with trinkets, and his shoes are worn; the little girl too wears a simple shawl). He has two tools in his upper pocket; he looks stylishly foreign. But the rear wheel of the tag-along is chocked front and rear, as though he had been helping set up the camera.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

‘Windows has encountered a problem and needs to close’ has been a large a part of my life in the last month or so, and so my PC is getting a new hard drive, which sounds at first as drastic as having a new engine put in a car (the inexact analogy maybe creates a mood in which one is relatively cheerful about what proves to be a relatively limited cost).

I have been reading R. B.’s Delights for the Ingenious (1684) and have been casting around on MLA and JSTOR to try to find out whether anyone has written on the ‘Majestie in Misery’ poem someone ghosted for Charles I. A Herbert scholar ought to have done so, for the poem is modeled on Herbert’s ‘The Sacrifice’, being a dramatic monologue for the guiltless sufferer, using Herbert’s tercets, but without the ‘Was ever grief like mine’ refrain. I assume that the writer wanted to nudge the reader towards an identification of his Charles Stuart with Christ, not scream it out: nor could his King repeat the Herbertian refrain without sounding ignorant of the analogy the poem invites. It must all have been written up already.

But here’s another Delights for the Ingenious poem, which I have put alongside the version in R. Fletcher’s translation of Martial’s epigrams, Ex otio Negotium (1656)], ‘An Epitaph’. It is about the executed Charles I:

Stay Passenger; behold and see, The widdow’d Grave of Majesty, Why tremblest not? Here’s that will make The most stupid, Soul to shake, Here lies intomb’d the sacred Dust. Of Peace and Piety, Right and Just. The blood (O start’st thou not to hear!) Of a blest King 'twixt hope and fear, Shed, and hurried hence to be The Miracle of Misery.

The Lawgiver amongst his own, Sentenc’d by a Law unknown; Voted Monarchy to Death, By the course Plebeian breath The Soveraign of all Command Suffering by a Common hand. A Prince (to make the Odium more) Martyr’d at his very door. The Head cut off! Oh, Death to see’t, In Obedience to the Feet! And that by Justice you must know, If thou hast faith to think it so; We’ll stir no further than this sacred clay, But let it slumber till the Judgment day. Of all the Kings on Earth, it’s not deni’d, Here lies the first that for Religion dy’d.

Stay Passenger: Behold and see The widdowed grave of Majestie . Why tremblest thou? Here’s that will make All but our stupid souls to shake. Here lies entomb’d the sacred dust Of Peace and Piety , Right and Just. The bloud (O starrest not thou to hear?) Of a King , 'twixt hope and fear Shedd, and hurried hence to bee The miracle of miserie.

Add the ills that Rome can boast. Shrift the world in every coast, Mix the fire of earth and seas With humane spleen and practises, To puny the records of time, By one grand Gygantick crime, Then swell it bigger till it squeeze The globe to crooked hams and knees, Here’s that shall make it seem to bee But modest Christianitie .

The Lawgiver, amongst his own, Sentenc’d by a Law unknown. Voted Monarchy to death By the course Plebeian breath. The Soveraign of all command Suff’ring by a Common hand. A Prince to make the odium more Offer’d at his very door. The head cut off, ô death to see’t! In obedience to the feet. And that by Justice you must know, If you have faith to think it so. Wee’le stir no further then this sacred Clay, But let it slumber till the Judgment day. Of all the Kings on earth, 'tis not denyed, Here lies the first that for Religion died.

The later version drops one bombastic section of the fuller text, but corrects ‘starest’ for ‘startest’,‘Offer’d’ to ‘Martyr’d’, etc.

But what interests me here is the way in which a prior poem to this surfaces in the otherwise hagiographically loyal text: in the lines

Here lies intomb’d the sacred Dust.Of Peace and Piety, Right and Just.The blood (O start’st thou not to hear!)Of a blest King 'twixt hope and fear,Shed, and hurried hence to beThe Miracle of Misery…

one can surely hear a more famous mid seventeenth century epitaph, John Cleveland’s on the Earl of Strafford, ‘Black Tom Tyrant’, the autocrat’s autocrat, Thomas Wentworth:

Here lies Wise and Valiant Dust,Huddled up 'twixt Fit and Just:Strafford, who was hurried hence'Twixt Treason and Convenience.He spent his Time here in a Mist;A Papist, yet a Calvinist .His Prince’s nearest Joy, and Grief.He had, yet wanted all Reliefe.The Prop and Ruine of the State;The People’s violent Love, and Hate:One in extreames lov’d and abhor’d.Riddles lie here; or in a word,Here lies Blood; and let it lieSpeechlesse still, and never crie.

The foreboding end to this poem is the reason why it came to the mind of the poet, Fletcher (or whoever it was) who wrote the epitaph on the king who sacrificed Strafford, and whose own blood answered the cry of the blood shed in 1641.

My image is Charles I on the scaffold, from Royall and loyall blood shed by Cromwel and his Party, &c. viz. King Charles the martyr. The Earl of Strafford. The Arch-bishop of Canterbury ... Doctor Hewit to which are added 3 other murthers of publique note (1662).